


25

by angelaiswriting



Series: Twin Link [1]
Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: Angst, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Mentions of past drug use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:28:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27874593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelaiswriting/pseuds/angelaiswriting
Summary: It’s been twenty-five years, but Nance is still mourning the deaths of her brother and her friends. Life hasn’t exactly been going in the right direction since 1995 — it never has, though, ever since she has memory — but little does she know her daughter Sarah is about to find out that Uncle Alex and Sunset Curve are back as ghosts and playing with an old school friend.
Series: Twin Link [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2040861
Comments: 10
Kudos: 44





	25

**Author's Note:**

> This was also posted on my [tumblr](<a%20href=). A friend and I came up with quite a bit for this scenario: let me know if you'd like to read more. (I'm always scared when I start posting for a new fandom lol).

**25**

It happens suddenly. One day she’s… _normal_ , one would say — doing her things, carrying on with her life, helping her daughter prepare her things to leave home as soon as high school ends — and the next she’s whole again.

She hasn’t felt that kind of whole in twenty-five years.

Alex used to call it their _twin link_ , back in the day, when putting up with their parents and their falling-out marriage seemed to be the worst thing they had to endure. Lex… 

There’s a treacherous tear running down her cheek and when her brain registers it, it’s almost too late. She feels it on her jaw, threatening to fall down onto the test she’s grading. Her mind almost anticipates what’s about to happen — the tear will dangle from her jaw for a moment, and then it’ll eventually land onto one of the words one of her students wrote, and it will stain it. But her hand is quicker, and it wipes that tear away before it’s too late.

 _Twenty-five years_.

Her throat knots up with the tears she has been trying _so hard_ not to shed. The anniversary of his death is coming up quickly, and with a son off at college and a toxic ex-husband still fighting to spill money out of her, she feels the loneliness and the weight of it all even more. It’s in her limbs when she wakes up, and it stays perched on her shoulders throughout the day, until it’s finally time to go to bed. And to start it all over again.

She’s managed twenty-five years without him, so she reasons that she can manage twenty-five more — it’s not like she has a choice. She promised it, after all, too long ago to even remember when, exactly, but that was one of the things they had both promised each other — that they’d have a happy life; that they’d _fight_ for it, no matter the cost, no matter where they’d be in the world, if together or if apart. Life had spinned the roulette and the ball had landed on _apart_ , but that had been out of their control.

“Mom? Mom, are you listening?”

Sarah’s standing there, fingertips digging into the cushioned back of the couch — her baby girl now at the threshold of adulthood. Time really _does_ fly in hindsight.

“I said I’m taking Lex on a run,” she says, brows furrowing as she lets the dog’s leash dangle in her hold, almost as a way to catch her mother’s attention. “Are you okay? Did Dad call again? Do you want me to call Jake?”

She shakes her head and only then, when her gaze drops to the kitchen table, does she realize she’s been gripping onto the red pen in her left hand with more force than necessary. “I’m okay, just thinking. Don’t be too late, you still have school tomorrow.” And although that’s true, her voice comes out soft and tired, and all of a sudden she knows tears are about to come. “Have fun,” she adds before her daughter can speak.

A pet to Lex’s furry head, and the dog has sprinted into a messy run towards the entrance door.

“You know you can talk to me.” Sarah’s standing in the corridor, but her head is poking into the room, a hand gripping the door frame. It’s a weird sight, albeit not unfamiliar — a boy her age, blonde hair much shorter, a happy smile on his lips, she’s seen that pose a million times in a past life. “If it’s about Uncle Alex…” There’s a long pause as the girl looks for the right words, goes over every possible ending she could come up with, but then settles for none. “You know it,” her daughter nods, and then she’s gone.

Unconsciously, she sits up straighter and strains her ears until she hears the front door open and close. Lex barks twice outside and through the open window of the living room, she can hear her daughter’s chuckle at the dog’s playfulness.

Then everything goes silent again and she’s left with that odd sensation in her soul. It’s nothing she can put her finger on, but it’s… _there_ , and it’s _something_. Something she had never known she felt until _that_ night, and something she hasn’t felt ever since. It knocks the wind out of her and as the pen falls onto the table, a sob tears its way up her throat.

It feels like home, in a way. It feels like being seventeen again — not the Zac Efron way, but it’s… again, _something_. Something so utterly _absurd_ that she’s this close to slapping a hand against her forehead, but that hand just ends up clamping down onto her mouth when she feels another sob coming.

She feels the sobs more than she does the tears. They seem to shake her from the inside out — and not just from there, but from her very _soul_. She tells herself it’s just the anniversary — and everything else in her life going both the wrong and the right way. Her marriage in shambles, and her kids off to college, leaving her with no one but the dog she rescued some five years ago at _their spot_.

It has to be that. It’s all catching up this year, after all. The twenty-fifth lap around the Sun, bringing back all the memories from that night, both at the _Orpheum_ and then in that alley. Her ex-husband trying to shatter what’s left of her life after leaving her utterly heartbroken one too many times already. Sarah going off to nursing school when the school year ends; and Jake playing his uncle’s instrument with his friends from college.

The house already does feel empty, but right now it’s almost hollow. Hollow and silent, almost expanding to infinity as she tries her best to keep herself under check — and she fails.

“C’mon, you’ve already done this countless times,” but her voice shatters on the last syllable and her lower lip quivers, and for a moment she’s blind even behind her reading glasses. “Just breathe.”

But that _just breathe_ doesn’t hit as well as her brother’s always did, it doesn’t calm her down. She’s left feeling like she’s whole again — and more than that, like she’s part of something bigger, of a two-for-the-price-of-one kind of deal. And as she makes her way upstairs, her knees aren’t the only part of her body trembling.

There’s an old shoebox on the top shelf of her closet. It’s been there ever since the beginning and through all the relocations her family has done since the unlucky day she moved in with Michael at eighteen. It’s a pale red by now, held closed by elastic bands of every color and they’re so many because when the memory of what’s inside makes her feel like she’s starting to crumble apart again, she adds one more in the desperate attempt to keep it sealed, to keep the past inside, hidden away, almost as though by doing so, she can keep every single one of those memories locked away in a dark and recondite corner of her mind.

But not today. Today she knows she has to open it. She feels it in her bones, and probably even deeper than that. And maybe it’s about time — just open the Pandora box and see what happens, or something like that. The tears are already there; she doesn’t see what else could come out of her hidden past that isn’t already there.

Taking the rubber bands off is the hardest part. One by one, it feels like ripping off a brick from the wall she has spent almost three decades building around herself. It’s exhausting and by the time she has reached the last rubber band — the last brick — she has no tears left to shed. But that’s good; it has the taste of liberation, like she’s finally free of a choker she didn’t know she was wearing.

Almost as a joke of fate, a velvety choker necklace is what welcomes her back to the 1990s when she takes the lid off. Black and simple, it used to be her favorite. It was her _lucky charm necklace_ , something she had somehow ended up always wearing when her brother and his group were playing.

But the stack of photographs is still there, right underneath it, and it takes her endless minutes to convince herself to pick them up. She doesn’t know how long she’s been sitting cross-legged on the floor for, but probably not as long as she thinks she has.

Her hand trembles when she picks up the first polaroid. And she feels it again, that lump of tears in the back of her throat, and then that sensation of absolute void and loneliness she has felt inside for so long.

The empty stage of the _Orpheum_ would be unrecognizable to anyone that doesn’t know where the photo has been taken. It’s just a place like any other, but she can still feel the electricity in the atmosphere almost as though she was still there, stuck between those four walls like some sort of ghost.

She was laughing, and so was Alex. He had an arm around her shoulders, and she had one around his waist. As absurd as it could sound, to this day she can still smell him — he had a cheap perfume he wore at gigs, one he had treasured dearly, and all because it had been a present from her for their shared birthday. And that night they had been laughing because Reggie had almost tripped down the stage when Bobby had called him over.

The memory crashes over her like a wave. Luke had tried to silence their laughter to snap a good picture — and she’s sure there are better ones in that shoebox — but somehow this in particular is the one that bears the most meaning.

“Guys, please!” She can still hear her friend as clear as day, probably more clearly than she hears her students in class every day. “Can you please…

*

_… please stop laughing? I’m tryna take a decent one here!”_

_“Sorry, bro,” but Alex is still laughing, and she is too, and in the hilarity of the moment, they end up pulling each other closer._

_The flash goes off and as Luke flaps the polaroid picture, Alex gives her shoulder a squeeze before eventually turning serious._

_“I’m glad you could come, Nance.” And although he’s smiling down at her from the height difference their twin bond hasn’t managed to level out, it’s clear from the look in his eyes that there’s something else lurking underneath the surface. It could be one of the billion things their parents have said — have spat out like venom in their usual style — but she can’t put a finger on one in particular._

_“They can say and do whatever they want,” she says as she shakes her head. “You know that, Lex: it’s always been you above anyone else and always will be. I’d choose you in a heartbeat over them. You know I’ll always be front row for you.”_

_He heaves a sigh and leans his forehead against hers. His nerves are starting to act up — as usual before a performance, before he sits down and starts pouring his heart out on the drums — but she knows he’ll find his calm very soon._

_“Just a little longer.” She tries to come off as reassuring, but there’s a pinch of fear — of the unknown, of failing, of having to go back — inside her at the plan they have come up with. “September is right behind the corner, then we’re both eighteen and out of that house for good. They won’t be able to stop either of us.”_

_“I know, I’m just… impatient.” He looks up when Bobby calls his name — they still have to rehearse their opening song for tonight. “I miss you when I’m not there, and I’m —”_

_“No need to be worried, Lex.” She pulls him into a side hug and breathes him in. And she doesn’t know it, not yet, but this will be the last time she’ll be able to do it. In her forties, she’ll still remember the way the fabric of his t-shirt felt against her cheek that night — soft and warm, smelling of the perfume she gave him on his last birthday; the way he playfully tugged on her braid, or how that chuckle ringed in the back of his throat. And even the way Reggie flirtingly called her just so that she would turn around. “Now go show them who’s best,” she chuckles, letting her brother go._

_Watching them play always gives her a first-time kind of sensation, and there’s no stopping her from dancing around, just feeling the music._ Now or Never _is one of her favorite songs of theirs, and she just knows they’ll make it big. Landing a gig and playing at the_ Orpheum _isn’t easy, but she’s looking at them — a bunch of seventeen-year olds, and she can’t but smile because they’ll hit the big time soon. Their own concerts, their own tours, no more sneaking around parents to play in a garage — but an actual career, with an actual label, and everything will be good._

 _And it’s almost exhilarating to know that they’re all willing to take her with them on their journey. It’s not like they’ll ever be able to get rid of Alex’s twin sister, not when they know how much they mean to each other, how important they are to each other as they wait to become of age. It’s the start of something big and she’s there with them, a bunch of kids she’s met almost by accident, and she can’t wait for tonight. The people, the_ Orpheum _…_

_She jumps around, excited, and there’s nothing else. Not her parents’ venom towards Lex, not the billion and one problems at home, not even volleyball practice at school._

_“Nancy!” She looks up when Reggie calls her name over Luke’s singing and when her eyes meet his, she realizes she’s tired of the endless and fruitless flirting and that she’d love to go to the school ball with him. “‘s one’s for you!” he grins, before joining the others in the chorus — **Keep dreaming like we’ll live forever, But live it like it’s now or never**._

_She cheers, and even the girl behind her giggles as she cleans one of the tables in preparation for tonight._

_The one before her is a sight that would turn into a picture in her mind with time, a photogram that would never fade, would never_ age _. Four friends living their dream — and it’s amazing to know that one of them is the person she cares about the most in the world. She looks at them and even at forty-two, she won’t be able to think back of Bobby with contempt as he stands on that stage._

 _It feels like finally being a part of something bigger than just herself, even if she’s standing on the sidelines, watching someone else living the dream. She’s there for that; she’s there for_ them _, and she will always be, wherever that’ll take them —_

 _— She doesn’t know that ‘wherever’ is a dirty couch in a back alley. Or an ambulance that will just arrive at its destination too late. Right now it’s the_ Orpheum _first, and then something bigger and better in the future._

_When the song is over, she’s the first to clap and whistle in an empty Orpheum Theater, excitement bubbling up inside her, making her blood buzz in her veins._

_“You’re the only groopie that matters,” Reggie jokes, pulling her into his side after jumping down the stage. “I’d ask you out on a post-gig burger if it wasn’t for…”_

_They both turn to glance at her brother and see him climbing down the stairs to the side of the stage to get to them._

_“Dream on, Reginald,” he says and she laughs._

_“It’s just rehearsals but you guys were killing it up there,” she smiles, intertwining her fingers with her brother’s. “I can’t believe you’re actually here.”_

_“And that you snuck out just to come and see us,” Bobby adds, a grin shyly stretching on his lips._

_“Bold of you to assume she’s not just here for Alex!” Luke picks her up from behind, his arms wrapped tight around her waist as he spins her around._

_“Put me down,” she laughs out of breath. “He’s my brother. Of course, he’s the number one reason I’m here,” she jokes._

_When he eventually puts her down and they stare at each other chuckling as they catch their breaths, Reggie is the first to speak. “You’re like family to us,” he says, “you make everything else worth it.”_

_She smiles, through her breathlessness and the skin of her face heating up. “You guys are family for me as well.”_

_There’s not much silence then, not when the few workers present cheer on the guys, distracting them from the moment. She stands there, smiling softly at the bassist in front of her, and he smiles at her just as warmly._

_“For the record,” she whispers, “I would have said yes to that post-gig burger.”_

_And he smiles, cheeks flushing pink before Luke’s_ Street dogs? _distracts them._

 _She watches as they all agree — all but Bobby, for he ‘could never hurt an animal,’ as he tries to flirt with the slightly older waitress. Rose. She’s nice, and as Nancy’s found out while the boys were setting their stuff up on stage, she has a group of her own. And just as Rose has made her feel at home while she had sat all alone on one of the stools, Nance steps in to steer the guys away just after Reggie gifts her one of their t-shirts —_ size beautiful _, and she’ll forever remember those two words with a smile on her face even years later._

_“I’m sorry, they just don’t know when to stop with the flirting,” she smiles apologetically just before guiding Luke towards the exit door._

_“You coming with us?”_

_“Later,” she nods, turning to face her brother as he’s pulling his jacket on. “I wanna make sure everything’s in order for tonight. This is your big chance, right?”_

_He nods. “I’ll wait for you.”_

_And she’ll forever regret ever speaking her next words. “Nah, it’s okay. You go on, I’ll reach you in five, ten at most. Just make sure there’s something left for me.” Twenty-five years later she still hears her own chuckle, still feels her brother’s warm cheek against her perpetually chapped lips as she presses a see-you-later kiss to his skin._

_She watches him leave, and answers to his ‘see you later’ with a wave of her hand._

_It’s almost unbelievable how cruel things are at times. You’re seventeen, sneaking around your parents, having fun with your brother and his friends, playing the piano for them every once in a while… and then suddenly the wheel of fortune spins again, and something as small and insignificant as a hot dog turns into a major plot point. The wind changes, and suddenly the colors start fading, the music turns fainter and fainter, until there’s nothing but static silence._

_When she leaves the building fifteen minutes — and an unexpected call from home — later, all she’s in the mood for are hot dogs and her friends. She doesn’t know where Bobby has gone off to, but she doesn’t pay it much attention as she wraps herself into her hoodie._

_The night air isn’t too chilly, but there’s something to it that brings goosebumps to her skin. She’s nauseous, and she doesn’t know whether it’s because she’s just got off the phone with her yelling mother, but she doesn’t care. They’re not going back home tonight anyway — little does she know that she won’t be going home for a completely different reason than just celebrating with her brother and the guys._

_The man selling street dogs out of his car greets her with a smile before she walks past him to fix herself a quick dinner. She’ll never understand how they’re yet to catch some disease from the weird food they eat before gigs, but she won’t have much more time to wonder._

_“The guys are inside,” he tells her when she hands him the price, and all she can do is thank him with a grin on her lips, her stomach closed into a knot, before making her way to the makeshift dining area._

_She stops in the entryway and quickly glances around before she spots them on the couch. Luke and Alex seem to have fallen asleep, but Reggie’s staring back at her and she finds herself blushing._

_“Won’t you finish your hot dog?” she asks as she walks up to them, a smile on her face that slowly leaves its place to a frown when the boy doesn’t answer, doesn’t react in any way._

_It’s then that the nausea gets stronger, and somehow she’s not in the mood to eat anymore._

_“Reg? Cat got your tongue?” She fails at that chuckle and when she’s close enough, she almost crouches forward to shake him by his shoulder. “Prank’s over, your staring is unsettling.”_

_His head falls backward, against the back of the dirty and tattered couch, and it’s then that her heart starts beating in her temples. She stares at him, frowning, her hot dog still in her right hand._

_“Reg?”_

_Her gaze moves down to his chest and suddenly, the place’s silence becomes deafening. She hears her heartbeat — she feels it everywhere in her body — just as she hears her breathing almost scratch every time she exhales. Her subconscious is quicker at reacting: her hand lets go of her friend’s shoulder all of a sudden, and it truly does feel like the contact burned her palm in a sickening way, but it takes her a full minute for the conscious part of her brain to catch up._

_His chest is not heaving._

_She gasps, and her hot dog drops down onto Reggie’s knee first and then to the floor._

_Frantically, her gaze swipes over Luke and Lex. She’s aware of everything and nothing at once. Her palms turn clammy; her breathing gets deeper, it almost hurts her lungs; and just as her eyes move from Luke to her brother, she knows she’s about to throw up. It’s cold — despite the place being sheltered, despite Lex’s too-big hoodie on her: goosebumps tug painfully at her skin. And when her wandering eyes stop on the person she loves most in the world, her knees threaten to give out and make her trip over Reggie’s extended leg._

_“Lex?” but her voice is a whisper. Her chest hurts as she seems to move in slow motion; her head is empty and heavy at the same time and oh_ my God, please, just —

_She doesn’t know how she’s managed to take those three steps to stand in front of her brother, and even twenty-five years later, that still feels like the hardest thing she’s ever had to do._

_He seems fine. She looks at him and there’s nothing weird on his face; he’s stained his shirt, but that can be fixed. Reggie could lend him his flannel. Hell, he could wear one of their_ Sunset Curve _t-shirts!_

_“Lex.”_

_She doesn’t know she’s falling until her knees crash onto the rough concrete of the floor._

_His hand is still warm when she gets a hold of it._

_And she can’t move. The nausea almost makes her head spin, and she feels… empty. It starts slowly. It’s a feeling as tiny as a pinhead at first, but it grows quickly, like a black hole that eats and swallows her whole, quicker and quicker the more the momentum picks up._

_“C’mon, it’ll be September soon… You have a concert tonight.”_

_But he doesn’t answer. And the more she stares at him, the more that whisper in the back of her head grows in volume —_

_—_ Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. _—_

_— until it echoes in her mind and her ears and —_

_“An ambulance is coming,” someone says — to her, to the three boys in front of her, she doesn’t know, it doesn’t matter, nothing does. “I’m sorry, if we had realized sooner —”_

_But she’s already turning her head to the side to throw up._

_The strongest memories of that night are the goosebumps, the cold, the nausea. And then that extreme loneliness building up inside her, quickly growing like some kind of alien parasite, rooting her to the spot, freezing her mind in a loop of_ Lex Lex Lex _that just goes on indefinitely._

 _And then the flashing lights of an ambulance and Bobby calling her name —_ Nance? Nance? Nan—

*

—nce?”

She whips around so quickly she almost loses her balance on the heels she’s wearing. No one has called her ‘Nance’ in forever, even Michael preferred ‘Nancy’, but coupled with that weird feeling that has been rocking her for a couple of weeks now, it truly does feel like suddenly being back in some familiar place.

It takes her a couple of seconds before her sight zeroes in on _the_ Trevor Wilson.

“Nancy?” The smile on his lips is unsure as he makes his way up to her between rows of clothes. He hasn’t changed since the last time she’s seen him, but at the same time she stares at him like he’s grown ten heads; like her brain can barely comprehend what’s going on. “That really you?” He has colorful clothes in his arms, she notices as her brain struggles to keep on functioning smoothly.

“Hey.”

“It’s been, what? Ten years?” Bobby’s never been good at small talk, and she realizes now that Trevor hasn’t become much better, not even after the decade that has passed since the last time she’s seen him at a teacher-parent meeting. “You look well.”

“Thank you.” Her heart is in her throat — it feels like choking, like gasping for air she can’t get —, and for a moment she forgets all about having a teenage daughter she needs to help find a dress for her school ball. “You look well, too.” It’s lame, but she can’t even attempt a chit-chat with the only one of _them_ that got away on his legs.

“How have you —” He sighs, and he probably catches up with what she’s thinking — the way her brain has stopped working, the way it must be back into that loop of loss first and drugs later, when they had turned their backs on each other. “How are you?”

“It’s been forty-two years of shit, Bobby,” she sighs. “But the kids make it good. I hope Carrie’s doing well. She was a good pupil.”

“I’m not…” _I’m not Bobby_ , that’s what he’s about to say. _I’m not Bobby anymore. I haven’t been Bobby in twenty-five years. Bobby’s dead_.

But Bobby _isn’t_ dead, he didn’t share his friends’ fate, so he shuts up. He still remembers the black eye she gave him the very day Trevor Wilson’s first song — _Luke_ ’s song — came out, and she reads it right on his face, in the way his expression changes and falls in defeat.

“I’m helping my daughter with her dress now. I should go.” The smile she gives him is tired and tense, and she doesn’t put much effort into coming off as a happy woman for him, not after the bad joke he pulled in the past. “It was good seeing you. I wish you well.”

And with that she turns around, swallows the lump in her throat and for a moment thinks back to Lex. Lex, and the fact that she didn’t get the chance to see him age into the man Bobby’s had the chance to become. To Luke, and the success he would have had with his talent. And then to Reggie, whose open eyes still haunt her to this day — and although she’s grateful for her children, she can’t help but wonder how things would have turned out if she and Reg would have had a chance.

“Mom? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.” Sarah is standing there, at the entrance of the changing rooms area, and although there’s her usual concerned frown on her face, she truly does look like a princess in that navy dress she didn’t want to try on.

Nancy chuckles — she wouldn’t have thought of those words, but boy, are they spot on! “Just someone I used to know. So, what do you think of that?” she asks, desperately trying to steer the conversation into another direction. “I wasn’t always a mom, I used to have good taste in outfits, too.”

Sarah laughs at her joke and she does, too. And for a moment, a split second, she sees her brother in the way her daughter laughs and looks away for a moment. But that memory is as short and quick as a flash, and she doesn’t have time to think about it for too long.

“Yeah, I know.” She’s almost on the verge of spilling the beans — that she and Jake have gone through her secret box with all her memories, but she catches her tongue just in time. There’s no need to upset her mother, not when she’s been in her head so much these past two weeks. “But I like it, and you could do my hair…”

An hour later, they’re walking back to the car, bags with food and anything Sarah might need for her ball in their hands.

Bobby — Trevor — is there, and Nancy holds his gaze for a few seconds as she walks by. She barely has the time to see Carrie’s head disappear into her father’s car before the door closes with a slam. They stare at each other, but it’s not Nancy and Trevor: it’s a pregnant Nance standing in front of a Bobby whose face is about to meet her left hook. It’s tense and silent, and there’s the same guilt in his eyes that he had back in 1998.

How did things go like that? She’s had twenty-five years to look for an answer to that nagging question, but she’s never found one — not in the three years she’s spent with her feet in two different worlds, and not even after the birth of Jake in ‘98.

“I was over at the Molinas’ to help Carlos with his homework yesterday,” Sarah says as she lays her new dress down onto the back seat of the car. “Did you know Julie’s started playing again?”

Nancy stares at her daughter for a long minute and the longer she stands there, as she finishes putting the groceries in the trunk of the car, the more that soft smile stretches on her lips. “Really?”

Sarah nods. “She apparently has a band of holograms or something now. Carlos doesn’t exactly know how that works, but says they’re cool.”

“Her mother would be so proud.” The engine roars to life and when she turns to check that nothing or nobody is behind them as she puts the car in reverse, she catches her daughter’s questioning expression. “She had a group as well.”

The _Sunset Curve_ demo her kids still listen to starts playing then, and Nancy has to be careful not to jolt the car to a stop — she didn’t remember it still being in the CD player, she thought Jake had brought it to college when he had left after spring break — he has been contemplating making his friends listen to his mom’s friends’ songs for months, but she must have been mistaken.

The silence is heavy, almost tense. It has the weight of a being alive of its own life, pressing down on her shoulders and robbing her of her breath as she leaves the parking lot of the mall and she heads back home. It’s always a pang to the heart, every time the notes start playing and Luke gets ready to sing again. And although it hurts, although the tears are always there, ready to prickle her eyes, it’s a way to keep them alive. Twenty-five years after their deaths, and she’s still childishly hoping that playing their songs will miraculously bring them all back to life.

It’s only when the chorus sings **_Keep dreaming like we’ll live forever, But live it like it’s now or never_** — the same one Reggie had playfully dedicated to her _that_ night — that Sarah clears her throat. “I didn’t know you knew Mrs Molina well.”

Nancy hums. “We met once, before…”

“Oh.” There’s no need for explanations, nor to wait for her mother to finish that sentence. “I didn’t know.”

“We never had the chance to get close,” she shrugs. “But I’m glad you’re going along well with her kids. How’s Carlos doing?”

Sarah laughs, and it’s in that moment that the sun starts shining again. That weird feeling of slowly-building wholeness filling her cup one drop at a time is still there, and somehow it’s still something she can’t explain — maybe the pieces of an unfinished puzzle going back to their place? or maybe just life finally starting to go in the right direction? — but it doesn’t feel as nagging with her daughter’s laughter ringing in the cabin of the car.

“He’s starting his career as a ghost hunter.”

“A ghost hunter?” A smirk tugs at her lips and it feels good, after years spent trying her hardest to do something that should have always been so natural.

“Yeah, his dad was taking pictures of the house when they were still considering selling it and one came out with three orbs. Carlos thinks it could be his mom with some friends, or just some ghosts in general, and he wanted my help to set his channel up since he knows I helped Jake and the guys with theirs.”

Nancy chuckles, and she feels light again after so long. The last time she’s felt like that was when the divorce papers had finally been finalized, probably. “So, are you? Helping him, I mean?”

“Hell yeah, I am, mom! That kid is the best kid I’ve ever babysat. He’s going through all the old stuff at his place to see if he can find anything that might help him find out whose ghost he’s dealing with.” She smiles brightly — and Nancy can’t help but mirror her expression when she sees it from the corner of her eye at a red light. “I think I’m —”

*

— _going to sing for Jake’s band_.

It’s a week after that afternoon in the car, and Nance is still thinking about the news Sarah has informed her of a few hours ago. Her daughter has been acting weird for a week now, and although she couldn’t pinpoint the cause at first — Sarah wouldn’t tell her —, she’s now starting to understand. Jake and his friends had a falling out with their singer Peter the day before a possibly important gig at Eats&Beats, the same one Julie and her hologram friends played at, and she’s probably been pondering her brother’s offer.

Still, it somewhat stings, for there have never been secrets between her and her girl. The pride bubbling up inside her is stronger than anything else, though, and she can’t help but smile.

It’s the first time she smiles at what had used to be her and her brother’s secret place at the beach. That alcove used to echo with the sound of their laughter a long time ago, but had quickly turned silent after that night at the _Orpheum_. It’s just the way things go sometimes, when you can’t make them go the way you want, when life’s outcomes are way out of your control.

It’s peaceful, and for the first time in painfully long years, she truly does feel at peace. It’s a weird, almost stressful feeling for someone who’s never exactly felt at peace in her life, but she’d like to think that this truly _is_ the start of a new and happy chapter in her life.

Lex is with her, with his head resting heavily on her thigh, much like the day she found and rescued him — or, well, the day _he_ found and rescued her. He’s always by her side, and somehow he knows when she needs him the most. It’s not exactly like having her brother with her but it’s… close.

“I wish you were here.” She never talks to her brother out loud, but somehow she feels the need to do just that now. The words leave her lips before she has the chance to stop them, and she finds that it doesn’t hurt as much as she had always thought it would. “The kids are following in on your footsteps more than they are mine.”

And it’s not a bad thing. At all. It’s a relief neither Jake nor Sarah have gone down the path Michael had started to take her along with him. And although Jake behind the drums is still a sight she won’t become fully used to all that quickly — she hasn’t managed to in twenty years —, it’s still comforting in a way. She watches him play with her brother’s only remaining pair of drumsticks and she feels at home.

“I’m so proud of them, and I like to think you’d be, too.” Then, she smiles again. “Sarah asked me if I believe in ghosts the other day. If I think people with unfinished business come back from the afterlife in an attempt to see it through. If I think you’d ever come back, maybe with the guys. And I…”

But her voice fails her. One of her hands comes down to caress Lex’s head while the other plays with a smooth piece of wood she’s found in the sand.

The truth is, she’s spent longer than she’d ever be comfortable admitting with her mind wondering about that same question, bouncing around like a pinball.

She doesn’t know the reason for Sarah’s weird behavior isn’t Jake and his friends asking her to join _September Dream_. Just as she could never imagine that last week, when Carlos Molina invited her daughter to his sister’s garage party, she saw three guys she’s only ever seen in her mother’s polaroids playing right in front of her like life had never stopped.


End file.
